Wandering Thoughts

The Need For A Center Part 3

“Where they crucified Him, and two others with Him, one on either side, and Jesus in the center.” John 19:18

It now becomes clear that the primary work of Jesus on the cross was not to save us from retribution, but to bring us into a relationship with the Father by the restoration of His character in us. What is required of us as people to receive the free gift of grace? May I be so bold as to say, it will cost you your life. George MacDonald put it simply when he said, “You will be dead as long as you refuse to die.” It is the good death! Paul writes in chapter six of Romans, “What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound? Certainly not! How shall we who died to sin live any longer in it?” Jessie Penn-Lewis explains in her book, The Centrality of the Cross, we as believers cannot conquer sin, but we can die to it. She continues to write, “Here is the cross in its aspect of death of the sinner with the Savior. It is clear from this that Christ’s cross is the sinners’ cross.”

The nature of the crucified life draws us into the heart of the Father, through the life of the Son, by the power of His Spirit working in us. Consider having a failing heart and being on a waiting list to receive a new one. The call comes in. A new heart is available. For Free. It will save your life. What must you do? Simply give up your old heart. Have you surrendered to the great physician of your soul? The exchange occurs at Calvary, our illness for His wellness. Let us turn back to our center, our source, our dwelling place, our life, our love, our Lord Jesus. Thank you Lord, for the cross.

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The Need For A Center Part 2

“Where they crucified Him, and two others with Him, one on either side, and Jesus in the center.” John 19:18

Often people argue there should not be a focus on Christ and Him crucified, but the greater focus should be on His resurrection. Paul Rees, in his beautiful book, The Radiant Cross, writes, “…drop the cross from those teachings and you have drained the blood from the Christian message. What we have left is a doctrinal system, but not a dynamic salvation.” Calvary stands as the point of reference. On the cross is where sin is forgiven, hope is restored and rest is established. The significance of the cross and its centrality to our faith remains that it is the great revealer of God’s supply for Man’s need. The cross rests as the place where our Lord completes the work of the Father. For He Himself said. “I have glorified You on the earth. I have finished the work which You have given Me to do.” Again on the cross He said, “…it is finished.”

At Calvary we see the severity of God’s love, through the sacrifice of God’s Son, for the Salvation of God’s world. We must understand the resurrection is only desirable if sin has been forgiven. We are told in Acts 24,“…there will be a resurrection of the dead, both of the just and the unjust.” All shall continue forever, but not all shall continue in life. For Jesus said, “I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in Me, though he may die, he shall live.” In order for Christ to fulfill these words, sin has to be judged once and for all. This truth brings us back to the cross where the crucifixion of our Lord brings forth the treasure of His resurrection. “Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the World.” Life dies to death that we might live in Him who is our resurrection. May the cross become our “magnificent obsession.” May we understand it is our door to life. It is the door of hope.

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The Need For A Center Part 1

“Where they crucified Him, and two others with Him, one on either side, and Jesus in the center.” John 19:18

As believers we often ignore the fact that without a center we have no balance, no equilibrium. Sadly, believers today tend to drift from what really matters. Within our fallen nature, we move away from our center. What is our center? What is our fixed point of focus? The Apostle Paul writes in the first Corinthians, chapter 2, “For I determined not to know anything among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified.” Alarmingly much of what we call Christianity today has little to do with Jesus Christ and Him crucified. We want Jesus without the cross. Without the cross of Calvary we find ourselves dwelling on the perimeters of religion. We concentrate our energy, pour our strength, and our ideas on what we should or should not drink, what music we should or should not listen to, what movies we should or should not watch. All the while Jesus waits to be wanted. It has been written, “no cross, no crown.” Without the cross, there is no Jesus and our Christian experience becomes a frustrating, vacuous nothing. We move outside the center, away from our Source and our Salvation, leading into the ever-shifting world of selective sanctification. We hide our powerless reality with band-aids and empty platitudes in hopes that we might overcome the storms of life. We often forget calmness is only found in the eye of the storm. Our Savior speaks tender words to us, “Come to me all who are weary and I will give you rest, let not your heart be troubled, pick up your cross and follow me, behold the Son”.

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Born Again From Above

“Jesus answered and said to him, “Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.” John 3:3

I believe there is a lot of confusion today around the phrase “born again.” First of all, there is such a stigma attached to the title “Born Again Christian.” Besides being redundant, it paints a picture in one’s mind of the individual who loves Thomas Kincaid, Carmen, the Left Behind series, TBN, and a host of other stereotypes. Now, I am not trying to poke fun (well maybe a little bit) but my point is none of those things have to do with Jesus. To be “born again” is not a title for a fundamentalist, but a reality for every man, woman, boy, or girl who responds by faith to the dispenser of grace, Jesus Christ Himself. So what is that reality? It is nothing less than new life from above. It is called regeneration, which means we were dead and now we are alive. We were lamps without oil, now we have oil. The new birth is not simply a new direction or a new way of interpreting reality, but it is a new dynamic altogether. It has its source in the reality upon which all other realities hinge: God Himself, by His Spirit, through His Son. It is summed up in Colossians 1:27 “To them God willed to make known what are the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles: which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.” Are you born again from above? Is Christ in you?

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Emptiness to Fullness

“And of His fullness we have all received, and grace for grace.” John 1:16

“Once I knew only darkness and stillness…my life was without past or future…but a little word from the fingers of another fell into my hand that clutched at emptiness, and my heart leaped to the rapture of living.” This came from Helen Keller who was an American Author and Educator who was also blind and deaf.

Not many live out their existence in physical darkness and silence as Keller did, but many live out their lives today in a spiritual emptiness that brings about a darkness and silence of a different sort. When life is lived without meaning, when every decision seems to have no weight upon the value of existence, when “Do what you like” becomes an unsatisfactory way to exist, emptiness comes. The question remains, “What do I like if nothing ultimately has value?” This conundrum is what Milan Kundera called “The Unbearable Lightness of Being” in his 1984 novel of the same title. He is right. If there is nothing beyond this life, “being” does become unbearably light and empty.

Our feeble attempt to fill the void, to answer the question of biography, always ends in a filling with things that accentuate the emptiness, increase the darkness and decrease awareness. What then must we do to be satisfied? How can we escape this emptiness?

Well, I think we must begin with something outside of ourselves and that something is Someone. The uncaused Cause, the Author behind the story, the Magician behind the magic. But if there is a Cause, why is the effect so wrong? If there is a Author, why is the story so sad? If there is a Magician, why is the magic so dark?

But what if the Author permitted freedom within the parameters of the Story that gave the characters the right to write into its pages the unfortunate consequences of decisions they make apart from the One who gave them “being?” And what if these decisions put into motion a series of effects that has turned the story, at times, into a nightmare?

But, again, what if the Author himself entered into the story to set right, that which has gone wrong? And what if that was the plan for the story before the story began? And in the end, there really will be a happy ending and the Author Himself is the Hero who makes it so. Would not this turn the nightmare into a fairytale? There is magic in this story and it is available to us. God has entered into His own story to set it right, through His Son’s life, death and resurrection. We look to Jesus, the Author and the Finisher of our faith and find in Him, the fullness for our emptiness. The Author reminds us and invites us to enter into His plan for His story where the unbearable lightness of being becomes the weight of Glory.

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For His Pleasure

“My food is to do the will of Him who sent Me, and to finish His work” John 4:34

I received a great question in an email about a month ago and would love to share it with you. It was in regards to “life’s meaning” and “living for God’s pleasure”.

Q: I don’t know if you can answer this, but I would like to know what you think. Part of my own (and I’m sure many others) motivation behind searching to find God comes from an emptiness inside me, and the horrible feeling that there is no meaning to my life. If the meaning of people’s lives as Christians is to follow God and to do his will, then what is the meaning of life itself? Why did God create us? Did he create us simply to give us the gift of life because it was in his power to do so? Tonight you said something about us living our lives for God for “His pleasure.” I’m not sure if that is exactly how you put it, but I didn’t understand what you meant by “for His pleasure.” Could you please explain that as well?

A: If God created us for communion with Himself then our greatest pleasure will be bringing Him pleasure by doing His will. The beauty of this is His will is accomplished and He is glorified when His children enjoy Him. Our enjoyment of Him, is discovered when, we make His interests our interests until they become our passions. Jesus gave us the example when He said in John 4:34 “My food is to do the will of Him who sent Me, and to finish His work”. In other words, what satisfied or fed His Soul was doing His Fathers will. It is like a marriage. If I want to be close to my wife I have to make her interests my interest. My greatest happiness as a husband is pleasing my wife. Not for what I can get out of the relationship, but how I can sacrificially invest into it. Inevitably this leads to the overall deepening of the marriage and brings greater meaning to life itself.

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I Wanna be Adored

“Set your mind on things above, not on things on the earth.” Colossians 3:2

How beautifully this verse unveils the great paradox that the heavenly-minded are of the most earthly use, while the earthly minded are of no use at all. Heavenly thoughts humble us by putting the gaze of our soul on the One above. Earthly thoughts elevate the ego, replacing the One above with ourselves. Humility exalts the heart, while pride degrades the soul. Everything within sinful man cries out, “I must be known,’ yet how quickly our natural desire to be known twists, turns, and transforms into the insatiable desire to be adored.

In 1989 The Stone Roses wrote a mesmerizing song titled “I wanna be adored.” In it their front man Ian Brown sings these disturbing words: “I don’t need to sell my soul / he is already in me / I wanna be adored”. It’s as if he is saying I have given myself so totally over to the devilry of pride that I must be worshiped. Now I know that just seems like a flamboyant and flippant lyric of some brash young rock star, but the bottom line is our celebrities are always expressing blatantly what all of us secretly desire.

What we need is an accurate picture of ourselves. Only then will we be on the path to humility. An unknown mystic in The Cloud of Unknowing writes that “Humility is nothing else but a true knowledge and awareness of oneself as one really is.” When we look up at the Cross, we allow Jesus to shine in and show us the depths of our depravity and the depth of His grace. When our hopes are fixed on things of this world we degrade our souls with the lie that we can be our own God.

May we remember the words of Thomas Kempis, “The Saints who are highest in God’s sight are the least in their own.”

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Celebrating Others Victories

“But if you have bitter envy and self-seeking in your hearts, do not boast and lie against the truth. This wisdom does not descend from above, but is earthly, sensual, demonic.” James 3:14-17

Our longings are often fixed upon a deeply inflated view of our own self-worth. The greatest egos notoriously struggle most intensely with envy and jealousy. Why? Because inevitably there will always be someone greater. Insecurities of being overlooked and a deep-rooted longing for what another has can quickly propel one into the realm of invidia.

I remember seeing Radiohead in concert in 1995, they were so amazing that I was depressed for a month because I could not accept that I would never be that good. I was unable to even enjoy the show, I could not celebrate their brilliance. How often are we like this as Christian’s? Scripture says God shows personal favoritism to no man and yet there seem to be stars that shine so much brighter than us.

Envy strikes our hearts in a way that robs us of contentment. We want to be one of the bright ones, one of the greats. Maybe our problem is we have redefined greatness to mean something different than what God means. Does Jesus not say that the greatest shall be the least? Envy is much more dangerous than just wanting what others have. It runs the risk of wishing for their collapse and thoughts of “If I cant have it neither should they.”

Love does not envy. It is not competitive. It celebrates other’s victories. Most importantly if we always want what others have maybe it is because we are not experiencing what only God can give. Envy kills relationships but kindness draws us out of ourselves and allows us to celebrate one another. May we be jealous only for God and His glory to be manifested in and through our lives, as we love one another.

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Blind with Rage

“Be angry, and do not sin: do not let the sun go down on your wrath, nor give place to the devil.” Ephesians 4:26-27

Sin blinds and nothing darkens the vision of the soul like hatred. How quickly anger turns to bitterness, bitterness to hate and hate to wrath. The Christian should be marked by gentleness, love, forgiveness, and self-control not retribution. But forgiveness costs us something for Bonheoffer was right when he said “we can either make them pay for what they did or we can absorb the wrong.” Be angry at evil but do not let your anger be misdirected. Satan will empower the flesh to flash such hatred from your heart that you are struck blind with a lust for vengeance. Are you harboring anger toward someone? Is “love thine enemy” falling on deaf ears and a furious heart? Are you honest enough to admit that you harbor and nurture the sin of interior retribution? Are you making them pay in your mind? Violent emotion is so difficult to pull under control. E. Stanley Jones once wrote, “hate is sand in the machinery of life; love is oil, and life works much better with oil than with sand.” Forgive, love, and live. May Christ anoint our eyes with the salve of love. May he open our eyes that we may be set free from self-concern, aware of evil but not giving place to it in our lives.

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A State of Indifference

“The soul of a lazy man desires, and has nothing.” Proverbs 13:4

A lack of motivation has come to mark much of our populace. It is almost as if we are so controlled by felt needs that in spite of the desire to do the responsible thing we become incapacitated by what feels like daunting duties. We give ourselves breaks and say tomorrow I will tackle this or that, but while the lists pile up the more immobilized we become. We have all sorts of coping mechanisms to escape the harsh reality of duties left undone. Entertainment, eating, and sleeping seem to be the most expectable form of escapism. The temporary satisfaction of felt needs is all they offer, but we will take anything to prevent ourselves from thinking to deeply about the fact that every moment wasted moves us closer and closer to the coming judgment. 2 Corinthians 5:10 For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, that each one may receive the things done in the body, according to what he has done, whether good or bad.

A.W. Tozer once wrote, “For centuries the church stood solidly against every form of worldly entertainment seeing it for what it is, a device for wasting time, a refuge from the disturbing voice of conscience and a scheme to divert attention from Moral accountability.” I would have to agree that our lack of productivity is indeed connected to our unwillingness to come to terms with our own falleness. By allowing ourselves to take in the worlds remedy for avoiding the disturbing voice of conscience we have become lost in non-reality. It simply doesn’t work; avoidance of responsibility will eventually degrade the image of God in man so deeply that it will inevitably lead to a much darker state, “a state of indifference.” This atrophies the soul so that we no longer feel anything and now find ourselves on the verge of despair.

What we need is what psychology calls “flow.” It is the antithesis of apathy and what scripture and the church call sloth. Wikipedia defines “flow” as, “the mental state of operation in which the person is fully immersed in what he or she is doing by a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and success in the process of the activity.” Jesus said in John 7:38, “He who believes in Me, as the Scripture has said, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.” We must as followers of Jesus yield to the Holy Spirit, only then can we face with a calm confidence the responsibilities of the day. We must be immersed in Jesus and out of our lives will flow living water. Accomplishing His will for His glory must be our supreme motivator for a true understanding of the Gospel should always lead to intentional and vigorous living for Kingdom purposes. If Jesus says “go” why would we ever hold still? May Christ by his Holy Spirit flow through us.

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